LOS ANGELES - The first time many people encounter the name of cool-school fashion label Acne Studios, they request the spelling. A-C-N-E? Yes. Like the facial blemish.

Even Jonny Johansson, Acne’s co-founder and designer, has his doubts about the name. “I hate the name Acne,” he said this week a few hours before opening the brand’s newest store. He cringed dramatically and says a co-founder of the Swedish label strong-armed him into using the name in 1996. “I never wanted the name but now I’m stuck with it. It’s too late.”

Johansson flew in from Stockholm this week to open Acne’s second store in the U.S. – but the label didn’t put the store anywhere predictable. While other fashion brands flock to Rodeo Drive or Melrose Avenue, Acne opted to open its store in gritty downtown LA, far from any sort of glitz in a historic Art Deco downtown building, called the Eastern Columbia Building. The neighborhood requires navigating around people sleeping on the sidewalk. Other nearby fashion stores sell $2.99 scarves under homemade signs.

But the neighborhood is poised to become a trendy hotspot, and Johansson got in while the rents are still cheap. Already a Umami Burger sits across the street and the trendy Ace Hotel, which hosted the store’s party, is right next door.

Because he had more space than he could use in the store, Johansson invited two friends (Michael Backlinder and Magnus Jökulsson) who own several coffee shops in Stockholm, called il Caffe, to open up in half the space. He says he figures people who make the trek to downtown L.A. will be parched. And what with the nosh, maybe they’ll stick around awhile.

Prescient calls like that are what have put Acne in the ranks of Isabel Marant, Carven and other scene-stealing fashion brands. Acne made its name selling generic looking denim when True Religion’s heavily embellished jeans were all the rage.

Acne’s aesthetic is experimental-meets-downtown. It’s one of the few labels that can produce a metallic linen man’s suit that looks wearable. The devil’s in the deceptively simple details.

Johansson, who uses words like “generic” and “honest” when describing what he wants his fashions to be, says the label has been growing by 20% to 30% a year — even during the 2008 financial crisis. Except for that nasty 2001, when, he says, “I wanted to design a whole universe. And I did it. And it was sh-t.”

There was another year when he wanted down coats to be slim cut. They came in so small that only tiny, skinny people could wear them. “We had down jackets in the basement that we couldn’t sell because they were made wrong,” Johansson says.

These early hijinks have been smoothed today. I first came across Acne a number of years ago when New York designer Gilles Mendel was wearing the label’s jeans in his studio. Mendel waxed poetic about the hard-to-find brand. Acne is no longer hard to find.

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Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.